EDITT Tower, Singapore, Singapore

Singapore’s skyline is getting greener

Ecological tower brings natural life back to urban site

Singapore’s 26 storey EDITT Tower, designed by architects T R Hamzah & Yeang, is being created to rehabilitate an urban, non-organic site, classified as ‘zero-culture’ where the natural ecosystem has been completely devastated. Besides meeting their client’s practical requirements for a tower for use as retail, exhibition and auditorium use, the design is very much an ecological design.

The unique feature of this scheme is the well-planted facades and vegetated terraces that surround the building. The design approach enables ecological succession to take place and to balance the existent inorganic nature of the site. The vegetation areas are designed to be continuous and to ramp upwards from the ground to the uppermost floor. Importantly the planting of the tower uses indigenous plants so as not to compete with the existing species of the locality.

The ramps are used to create a continuous spatial flow from street level to the floors of the city’s high rise towers and high-level bridge-linkages are added to connect to neighbouring buildings for greater urban-connectivity. The tower’s green credentials continue inside the tower with ecological features including water self-sufficiency through rainwater-collection and grey-water reuse at over 55% and the design optimises recovery and recycling of sewage waste through the creation of compost and bio-gas fuel. The EDITT tower will also achieve almost 40% energy self-sufficiency through a system of solar panels.

The EDITT Towers won the 1998 competition for Ecological Design in the Tropics and the building will be realized at the junction of Waterloo Road and Middle Road in Singapore.